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anyway.”
    â€œIt’s always too late to ask that kind of question,” I said. “From the day you’re born.”
    I was aware of a certain irritation. I didn’t want this sort of conversation and yet here I was in midstream in spite of the faint suspicion I’d had for a while now, where Burke was concerned, that somehow I was being conned, caught in a spider’s web of Irish humbug served up by a talent that wouldn’t have disgraced the Abbey Theatre.
    He glanced at me and there was urgency in his voice when he said, “What about you, Stacey? What do you believe in? Really believe in with all your guts?”
    I didn’t even have to think any more, not after the Hole. “I shared a cell in Cairo with an old man called Malik.”
    â€œWhat was he in for?”
    â€œSome kind of political thing. I never did find out. They took him away in the end. He was a Buddhist—a Zen Buddhist. Knew by heart every word Bodidharma ever said. It kept us going for three months.”
    â€œYou mean he converted you?” There was a frown on his face. I suppose he must have thought I was going to tell him I couldn’t indulge in violence any more.
    I shook my head. “Let’s say he helped shape my philosophy. Me, I’m a doubter. I don’t believe in anything or anybody. Once you believe in something you immediately invite someone else to disagree. From then on you’re in trouble.”
    I don’t think he’d heard a word I’d been saying or perhaps he just didn’t understand. “It’s a point of view.”
    â€œWhich gets us precisely nowhere.” I flicked what was left of my cigarette into the water. “Just how bad are things?”
    â€œAbout as rough as they could be.”
    Not only the villa belonged to Herr Hoffer. It seemed the Cessna was also his and he’d provided the cash that had gone into the operation that had got me out of Fuad.
    â€œDo you own anything besides the clothes you stand up in?” I asked.
    â€œThat’s all we came out of the Congo with,” he pointed out, “or do I need to remind you?”
    â€œThere have been several bits of banditry in between as I recall.”
    He sighed and said with obvious reluctance, “Imight as well tell you. We were in for a percentage of that gold you were caught with at Râs el âyis.”
    â€œKan-How big a percentage?”
    â€œEverything we had. We could have made five times its value overnight. It looked like a good proposition.”
    â€œNice of you to tell me.”
    I wasn’t angry. It didn’t seem to be all that important any more and I was interested in the next move.
    â€œNo more wars, Sean?” I asked. “What about the Biafrans? Couldn’t they use a good commando?”
    â€œThey couldn’t pay in washers. In any case, I’ve had enough of that kind of game—we all have.”
    â€œSo Sicily is the only chance?”
    It was obviously the moment he’d been waiting for—the first real opening I had given him.
    â€œThe last chance, Stacey—the last and only chance. One hundred thousand dollars plus expenses . . .”
    I held up my hand. “No sales talk. Just tell me about it.”
    God, but I’d come a long, long way in those six years since Mozambique. Little Stacey Wyatt telling Sean Burke what to do and he took it, that was the amazing thing.
    â€œIt’s simple enough,” he said. “Hoffer’s a widower with a stepdaughter called Joanna—Joanna Truscott.”
    â€œAmerican?”
    â€œNo, English and very upper-crust from what I hear. Her father was a baronet or something like that. She’s an honourable anyway, not that it means much these days. Hoffer’s had trouble with her for years. One scrape after another. Sleeping around—that kind of thing.”
    â€œHow old is she?”
    â€œTwenty.”
    The Honourable